


A Mistake

by Haberdasher



Series: Twitch Plays Pokemon [33]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Twitch Plays Pokemon (Let's Play)
Genre: Gen, Twitch Plays Emerald, Twitch Plays FireRed, Twitch Plays Pokemon, Twitch Plays Red
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2851538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A realizes that entering the world of FireRed may have been a mistake. Sequel to A Connection, but can be read separately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mistake

It took A a while to realize that not all was right with this world.

A quick glance in the mirror revealed that she didn’t look quite the same. Her hair was longer than before, long and straight, and her outfit was now composed of hideous shades of turquoise and pink rather than the red and green get-up that she’d grown attached to after wearing it for weeks. But that was only natural, wasn’t it? History had changed, and she was from Kanto now; was it really any surprise that her appearance was slightly altered?

It felt strange having Red’s mother refer to her as her daughter when being told about Professor Oak’s errand, or reading the sign outside the door and seeing that it now had her name on it instead of Red’s. But that was how it was supposed to be now. Red was… well. she wasn’t quite sure where Red was now, Red was safe, that was the important thing. Red had escaped the voices that he so dreaded, and right now, that was all that mattered.

The voices didn’t seem to know much about Red’s fate, but they talked a great deal of her return, of what she had done. They knew that this had been Red’s journey, that they had lead him through this path before, that something drastic must have happened. They kept using the word “randomized”- was that how they described her shifting the course of fate in this way? Maybe, maybe not. Who knew with the voices. They jabbered on about the strangest things, and gleaning any actual knowledge out of their gibberish was a formidable task.

The few words she had exchanged with Professor Oak before were polite and formal, but now he was friendly, enthusiastic, concerned for her safety. But why wouldn’t he be? In this world, they must have known each other for years.

Red’s old childhood rival looked exactly as he had described him. They had never met face-to-face before their meeting in the lab, but he greeted her as an old friend, affection evident in his constant teasing.

The first sign that something else had changed was when Oak called his grandson Green instead of Blue.

Similar names, to be sure, but Red had definitely called his old neighbor Blue, hadn’t he? Now that she tried to think back, however, A wasn’t quite sure. Maybe she had mixed up the two colors in her mind. Or maybe it had just been a slip of the tongue from the absent-minded old man.

That was why he called that Machop a Bulbasaur, right? Just another slip of the tongue, it had to be, or his forgetting what Pokemon he had put where. The professor must be getting senile in his old age. The voices had made her choose the Poke Ball that neither Red nor Blue- or was it Green?- had taken before, one which could have contained just about anything. So it had been a Machop all along. Machop, Charmander, Squirtle. It made as much sense as anything else.

Except that the “Charmander” that Green had chosen, the one that should have been a mirror image of Red’s beloved and mourned Abby… wasn’t. Instead, his Poke Ball opened up to reveal a Horsea. And her Machop refused to move half the time, a flaw that made him pass out in their very first battle, though he was perfectly obedient in the other turns.

A closed her eyes, took deep breaths, and tried to consider what might have happened. She felt her stomach sink as she realized that something must have gone wrong when she’d changed the timeline. Some small error, one tiny scratch in the ground that broke one of her circles, and Oak’s Pokemon had been forever altered. But that wasn’t so bad. She could live with a few hiccups here and there.

It wasn’t until A entered the wild grass north of Pallet Town that she finally realized the magnitude of her mistake.

Bugs that shot lasers. Birds and slugs that punched. Half the Pokemon she saw weren’t even supposed to be in Kanto, let alone having such strong and unusual moves. Everything was wrong. Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

And it was all her fault.

If she had just let things be, let Red live with what had happened, the world would be normal, still the calm normal Kanto that her friend had known and loved. But no, she had to mess with things, had to change the very fabric of reality. She was just a teenage girl, a stupid young girl. What had possessed her to think that she could hold such responsibility?

A wondered once again if, in this strange world, Red was tucked away in some sleepy town, safe from the horrors that had taken over. If he was, if she had managed to save him from the voices and the chaos and the suffering after all, then… then maybe…

No. This had to be fixed. And she was the only one that could do it. Nobody else seemed to realize that anything was wrong; they had lived in this world their whole life, they didn’t even realize that birds weren’t supposed to be able to punch things. Only she knew the truth. Only she could make things right, return this “randomized” world to some semblance of normalcy.

And she knew just how to do it.

As the voices sat in Viridian City, uncertain how to proceed in a world filled with chaos that exceeded even their own, A took matters into her own hands. She grabbed a stick and started sketching circles, racing through the symbols that she had been planning out in her mind for hours…

Then she stood up, her stick scratching against the ground, marring her intricate designs.

She tried again. This time, the voices made her wander around in circles, her footsteps scratching the ground. And again- but before she could finish even the first circle, she dropped the stick in order to check her bag, though it was all but empty now.

A few tries later, A had to admit defeat. Even when she came close to filling out the pattern that would fix everything, the voices never let her stand in the circle and chant the words of power, and the sigils never lit up. And if a few misspoken words or errant lines or forgotten circles had changed this world so drastically… the odds of her retaining control despite the voices long enough to make her work flawless were near zero, and their interference could lead to her creating an even more chaotic world, if such a thing were even possible.

But if the voices wouldn’t let her fix things… well, they would leave when she became Champion, right? And how long could that take? Only a few weeks, probably. The thought of staying here for so long made her heart sink, but at least there was an end in sight. She only had to survive a few weeks in this land of wonders and horrors, and then she would be free to set everything right.

How hard could it be?


End file.
